So it Goes
by LittleMissBones
Summary: A look at the lives of Scott and Steve if they had gotten off the island with the rest of the Oceanic 6. Written for the 2010 LostSquee Luau, with the prompt 'The Future.' Scott/Steve, one-shot.


**A/N**:This was written for the 2010 LostSquee Luau over at livejournal for toestastegood's prompt of 'The Future.' A look at the lives of Scott and Steve if they had gotten off the island. Enjoy! And yes, I did take something from Slaughterhouse-Five and put it into this fic.

Surprisingly enough, they actually do get off the damn island.

(It's a fitting ending, watching it disappear before their very eyes, seeing as that place had made sure their lives had gone to hell before spitting them back out again.)

So it goes.

Penny's boat drops them back on the raft, then suddenly they're 'rescued' (seeing his parents and siblings again is the only comfort he has) and the media gets wind, calling them the Oceanic Eight and setting them up for God-knows how many press conferences and interviews, Oceanic getting their nameplates wrong again (_happens to the best of us_, Steve jokes as he hands Scott the correct one), dodging the awkward questions and letting Jack take the difficult ones (remembers Jin, Claire, Rose, Bernard, Sawyer and Juliet and the rest that they left behind), all of them breathing sighs of relief when it's over.

He's back in the real world before he knows it, to his mundane job and the nicer apartment he bought thanks to the settlement money from Oceanic (gives some away to charity and his parents and siblings, the rest stored in his bank account and in college funds for his nephews and nieces), babysitting Aaron for Kate while she's on trial and attempting to keep his mind off the island and one individual in particular, going through the motions of everyday life yet missing something.

It's when Steve shows up at his doorstep, giving him a bear hug and a kiss on the cheek that he realizes what that something was.

So it goes.

They settle easily into their new lives together, Steve moving his stuff into their apartment (he still has to get used to the plural form, but knows that what they're doing is worth it), receiving visits from Aaron and Kate and Jack, Sayid and Nadia, Hurley, even Sun comes to visit with her new baby that looks so much like Jin, keep up appearances, maintain some sense of normalcy and avoiding discussion of the strangest three months of their lives.

They discuss it when they're in bed at night, of course, sharing their secret and recalling their lives before and after that place affected them in more ways than they can imagine.

He and Steve talk adoption and decide to do it, take in two-year-old Erica and her newborn Down syndrome brother (name him Quentin Eugene after both of their grandfathers), settle into their lives as a family of four with a new house in a decent neighborhood, the nice gay couple that survived the Oceanic 815 crash and their newly adopted daughter and son.

When they hear of Nadia's death, they don't realize that it isn't just a simple blip on the screen of their lives.

So it goes.

Three years later, it all comes back with a knock at the door.

Erica excitedly runs to grab it, opening the door and giving the man in the wheelchair a quizzical look (_You must be Erica. I'm a friend of your daddy's)_ and running back to him with a nervous glance at the stranger.

John Locke calmly sits at the front door of his Los Angeles home, looking as if he hasn't changed a day since the day he got out of his own personal hell. Scott invites him in, naturally, introduces him to the kids and allows Quentin to sit on Locke's lap while they chat.

Locke's pleas to return to the island fall on deaf ears and Scott can only wish him luck as he wheels him out the door and out of their lives.

(Erica asks her Papa questions and Quentin cries for the bald man, but when Steve hears of Locke's request, he kisses him and reminds him that they did the right thing.)

So it goes.

The next week, it's a complete surprise to hear that Ajira Airlines 316 has flown out of the island with more survivors.

They watch, shocked, as Claire, Sawyer, Miles, Frank, Richard, emerge from the aircraft, Kate in handcuffs, and go through the same process they did three years ago. They call, offer to help, re-immerse themselves in 815 activities and take in Claire, teach her how to parent Aaron while Kate sits in a jail cell.

Their old version of normal never returns.

Scott wouldn't have it any other way.

So it goes.


End file.
